One Late Night

Ashley Shayne

Sammy’s pissed. It’s late, she’s tired and her lousy
boyfriend cancelled on her again, forcing her to walk home through a dangerous
part of town by herself. But little does Sammy know, she’s not alone in the
dark. Monsters are real and so are vampires. Fortunately, not all things that
go bump in the night are ugly and evil. In fact, some are even quite
attractive. Who’s Sammy to let the little detail of a relentless enemy get in
the way of earth-shattering pleasure?

Reader Advisory: This story has graphic sexual language and
scenes—no closed bedroom doors (or other rooms) here!

An
adult paranormal romance
from Ellora’s Cave

I picked up my pace, hurrying through the silent, dark
streets and cursing my boyfriend Alex for calling at the last minute and
telling me he had to cancel our date and wouldn’t be able to pick me up
tonight. I worked nights at a gas station and usually got off at 2:00 a.m. As
if working the graveyard shift all alone wasn’t bad enough, Alex knew I hated
walking home by myself. It was always late and dark and my route took me
through a rough patch of town that flat-out scared me. The area was a mix of
industrial and residential buildings and was made up of big, empty warehouses
and lots with large blocks of cheap apartments thrown in around the edges.
There was rarely anyone around and the people I did see were rough and
scary-looking. Usually, when I knew Alex wouldn’t be coming to meet me, I
either arranged with my brother to pick me up or I took a cab home. But my
brother wasn’t answering his phone and payday was two days from now. My budget
was way too tight to justify a cab home tonight.

I told myself I’d be fine—my usual mantra when I got stuck
walking alone—and tried not to hurry too obviously. I always felt that if I
started running, I would look like a ready-made victim and anything coming
after me would get the thrill of the chase as an added bonus. I clattered along
as fast as I dared, wishing I hadn’t worn high heels tonight. I’d been
expecting a nice evening with my boyfriend and had taken time with my
appearance. I was wearing a pretty, wraparound blue skirt that flowed out
around my hips and stopped just above my knees, and a white silk tank top. A
white bag and white pumps completed my outfit. Though it was a warm evening,
I’d have brought a sweater if I’d known I’d be walking home alone.

I cursed softly as I went. This was typical of my life.
Everything was boring or stressful. Nothing at all was any good. My friends
were moving on with their lives and having families. That wasn’t in the cards
anytime soon for me and I had no interest in intruding on their busy lives too
much. I found myself wishing, as I often had been lately, that I could just up
and leave my life. Move somewhere exotic. Do something different. Meet someone
new. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to leave and no one new ever came here.
Or if they did, I never met them. And something exotic? Fat chance.

My heels tapped on the pavement with every step I took and
were basically announcing my presence to anyone who might be interested in a
woman walking alone at night. The wind tugged at my long, dark hair, tangling
it around my face as I went, and I wished I was home already, tucked up in a
blanket on the couch, watching a feel-good movie and trying to ignore how hurt
I was that Alex had cancelled. Again. The second time he’d done so this week
alone and he must have cancelled at least a dozen other dates with me in the
last two months. I didn’t understand what his issue was. If he wanted to get
rid of me, all he had to do was say something. And to make things even more
confusing, he was acting like his usual sweet self when I saw him. When he
showed up at all, that was. I wondered if he’d met someone else and was just
stringing me along until he decided who he wanted. Alex had a selfish side and
I was dismayed to discover that it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn he’d
been cheating on me.

As I hurried past a dark, narrow alley, I heard an odd
sound. Sort of a wheezing, snorting, cough kind of noise. I froze. What the
hell was that? It sounded like the sort of sound you’d hear in a zoo or a
tropical jungle, not the urban jungle of Manhattan. As I stood there listening,
uncertain and beginning to feel a little fearful, I heard the noise again, a
little closer this time. I backed away from the alley as quietly as I could, staying
on my tiptoes to stop my heels from tapping on the pavement. I backed far
enough away that I’d have a small head start if something came out of the alley,
and then spun on my heels and ran for it.

I ran three straight blocks before my lungs forced me to
stop to pant and recover myself. I leaned against a wall and tried not to pant
too audibly. Large, solid, empty buildings rose around me, and there was no
movement in sight. A thin fog had rolled in and I could only see for a block or
so down the road. It was incredibly eerie, and as I looked around me I realized
I didn’t know where I was. I’d run in a different direction than the one I
normally took when I walked home and I hadn’t read a single corner street sign,
paid no attention to where I was going. Great. Not only had I freaked out
because I’d heard what had to have been a dog, now I was lost in a bad part of
town late at night.

Suddenly, as I panted and sagged against the wall, I heard a
skittering noise. It sounded as if someone had kicked a rock down the pavement.
I flattened myself against the wall and tried to breathe as quietly as
possible. In the silence, I heard the snuffling sound again. Pure terror
gripped me as I watched a shape slowly grow in the fog. It looked like
something impossibly large was coming down the road toward me.

I sank into a ball against the wall and stared in shock as the
shape entered the street behind me. It was huge and shaggy and moved oddly, in
a shuffling, disjointed sort of way. As though its legs and arms didn’t work
like a normal person’s would. They swung out at odd angles as it moved, and the
whuffling noise came again as it waved its head over the ground. The thing
looked as if it was sniffing the ground…tracking something. Trying not to
entirely freak out, I told myself that whatever it was tracking was probably
not me. It had to be something else, someone or something that meant something
to that beast. Not just some random human. I tried desperately to ignore the
small, fatalistic voice in the back of my head that was screaming that it might
just be hungry, and I hoped it would ignore me.

It snuffled again and its head swung toward me. Tears
started running down my cheeks as it approached. I thought about trying to run
again but something told me it was futile. Even if I managed to sneak past the
thing, it had shown up incredibly quickly after I’d run three blocks away from where
I’d first heard it. Either there were more of these creatures around or this
one was fast enough to follow me with no effort. Either way, I was probably
doomed.

I thought about my mom and my little brother and wished I’d
called them before I left for work today. I thought about Alex and decided our
relationship was over if I lived through this. Then I just squeezed my eyes
shut and waited to die.

Through my catchy, uneven breathing, I heard the creature
shuffle closer to me and then a gust of wind blew against my face and my eyes
flew open as a tremendous crash echoed through the street. What I saw
astonished me. The creature was lying in a heap across the road and it didn’t
seem to be moving at all. A tall, dark man was standing over it, looking down
and seeming somehow thoughtful.

I stared at him in shock and tried not to move or draw
attention to myself. Suddenly the figure started laughing, a deep, wholehearted
chuckle that was so surprising to me in my present state that I gasped. He
turned casually at the sound and glanced over his shoulder at me.

He was gorgeous. If my eyes could have gotten wider, they
would have. He had jet-black hair cut in a short, messy style that fell over
his forehead, and a straight, perfect nose. His lips, wide and sensuous, were
curled in an amused smile and his bright-blue eyes seemed to look into my soul.
He must have been six feet tall and was lean and muscular under his tight black
tank top and jeans. At any other time and place, I would have been too
intimidated by his beauty to even look at him for long, but right now I was too
shaken to do more than feel a momentary breathlessness at his godlike
attractiveness before the fear took over again.

The amusement in his eyes changed to appreciation as he took
me in. I’ve been told I’m hot—though both my body and my features are too
irregular to ever be described as “beautiful”—and from the unmistakable look in
his eyes, it seemed he found me attractive too. Even while huddled in a corner
of an alley in terror, apparently. He smiled slowly at me, a full smile this
time, and came toward me. He crouched down in front of me and I noticed that
his teeth weren’t human. The incisors came to points. Very sharp points.

Oh my God!
He’s a vampire!
I followed this
thought with a choked-off laugh and a mental slap upside my head.
Of course
he wasn’t a vampire.
Vampires
aren’t real,
I told myself sharply.
Almost unwillingly, I looked across the road at the crumpled shape lying there
and back to the man kneeling in front of me. At least, I
thought
they
weren’t real. After the last five minutes, I wasn’t so sure.

“Are you all right?” he asked me softly. His voice was
soothingly melodic, deep and gentle. “I’m Adin. Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt
you.”

Stunned, I managed to nod. He opened his mouth to continue
and I heard the soft snorting noise again. I made a sound I can only describe
as a squeak and Adin’s head whipped around toward the noise. For several
seconds, he appeared to listen intently. I thought I heard a sound come from
the direction opposite to the one the odd noise came from and heard myself
start to take short, harsh, ragged breaths as terror flowed through me. Adin
looked back to me and I stared into his eyes in desperation. I was suddenly
certain those things would kill me if they found me. I was equally sure only he
could save me and I really, really hoped he was going to. It would be so easy
to just leave me here for the monsters.

“Please don’t leave me,” I begged, grabbing one of his hands
and looking into his eyes fearfully.

He stared back at me for a moment and then seemed to come to
a decision.

“I won’t leave you. This is my fault. You shouldn’t have
been caught up in this. Come.”

In one quick motion, he rose from his kneeling position and
swept me up into his strong arms. He told me to hold on and then swiftly started
running for an alley I hadn’t noticed, which ran behind what looked like an
abandoned plant. I tightened my arms around his neck as we sped down the alley.
We were going much faster than any unburdened man could possibly run, much less
one who was carrying a full-grown woman in his arms. The wind whipped the hair
back from my face and my skirt out around my legs. I turned my face into his
chest to help me breathe in the strong wind and thought again that whatever
Adin was, it wasn’t just plain old human.

We rounded a corner and Adin skidded to a halt so suddenly
he almost dropped me. Not one but two more of the monstrosities were waiting
for us in the alley. They snuffled and both their heads snapped up. I assumed
they smelled us on the wind. One roared, a terrifying sound I was sure I would
hear in my worst moments for years to come, and Adin quickly put me down and
thrust me behind him.

“Sorry about this,” he told me ruefully. “Stay behind me.
Pay attention and try to run if you can.”

And with that, he leaped at the nearest of the two
creatures. He moved almost faster than I could see and I heard a bellow of pain
from the beast he’d targeted. It staggered back and fell but before Adin could
follow up, the other beast was on him. Quick as a flash it backhanded him into
a wall and he slid down the rough brick surface to land propped up on the alley
floor. He shook his head and seemed dazed and I had a moment of terrified
despair.

The second creature advanced on him and I cursed silently to
myself. I thought about running but it seemed pointless. My death would be mere
moments behind Adin’s, of that I was sure. Desperately I cast my gaze around
the alley, looking for a weapon. I spotted a steel pipe lying on the ground and
snatched it up. The pipe was hard and solid and I thought it was better than
nothing. Tears running down my face, I crept up behind the beast that stood
over Adin, reaching toward him with claw-tipped, paw-like hands. With as much
power as I could muster and the strength of the fear and adrenaline coursing
through my system, I brought the pipe up over my head with both arms and then down
on the beast’s skull.

I was nowhere near strong enough to actually hurt it but it
staggered and roared in surprise, turning toward me. I scrambled back in terror
as it advanced and I fell to the pavement, sure I had just signed my death
warrant.

Suddenly a pair of white hands appeared on either side of
the beast’s neck. With a swift wrench and a horrible cracking noise, the
creature’s head twisted to the right and it fell to the ground. Adin stood
behind it, staring down at me. He gave me an unreadable look before grabbing
the pipe from my hand and leaping to bring it down on the head of the first
creature, which had managed to get to its feet. It crumpled to the ground and
the alley was suddenly and shockingly silent.

Adin moved toward me slowly as I sagged in relief and I
tried not to recoil from him as he did so. He had certainly just saved my life
and despite the fact he wasn’t human, a fact of which I was now sure, he
deserved gratitude and courtesy from me. No matter what he was.

I took a deep breath. “Thank you for saving my life,” I told
him quietly and sincerely before I started shivering uncontrollably.

He looked at me, his eyebrows tilted in surprise. “I suspect
I should thank you for saving mine. I thought you would run. You should have.”
He eyed me intently. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Samantha,” I replied, still shaking. “My friends call me
Sammy.”

“Well, despite the circumstances, it’s nice to meet you,” he
told me wryly. “You’re cold. Come, it’s still not safe here.”

I looked around in horror and he stepped closer and gathered
me into his arms. He was much warmer than I’d expected him to be.